FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
13 matching pages
Page 1 of 11929 · PDF PAGE 48
VII As the putrefaction of the brain advanced, the burst- ing of the pustules occasionally overlapped, with the result that the confusion and exaggeration of madness with all its poignancy was superadded to the simpler hell. One might have thought that any confusion would have been a welcome relief to a lucidity so appalling; but this was not so. The torture was infused with a shat- tering sense of alarm. The images rose up threatening, disappeared only by blasting themselves into the pultaceous coprolite which was, as it were, the main body of…
1929 · PDF PAGE 46
…yself, seen as every woman that has ever been, each one with every disease and torture that Nature and man have plotted in their hellish brains, each ended with a death, a death like Arthur's, whose infinite pangs were added to his own, recognized and accepted as his own. The same with our child that never was. All children of all nations, incredibly aborted, deformed, tortured, torn in pieces, abused by every foulness that the imagi- nation of an arch-devil could devise. And so for every thought. I realized that the putre- factive changes in t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 36
…to a million pieces. O God! hear my one prayer! let an Anarchist throw a bomb and smash Magdalen into a million pieces! espe- cially the brain! and the brain first. O God! my first and last prayer: smash Magdalen into a million pieces! The horror of this thought was my convictionthen and nowthat it represented perfect sanity and coher- ence of thought. For I dreaded utterly to think what such words might imply. At the door of the sick-room I was met by the male nurse, who asked me not to enter. Uncontrollably, I asked, Is he dead? and thou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 44
was the prey of this fear ineffable. Of this fear it was evident that there must be a physical basis in the consti- tution of his brain and body. All the other phenomena had been shown to correspond exactly with a physical condition; it was the reflection in a consciousness from which human limitation had fallen away of things actu- ally taking place in the body. It was a false interpretation perhaps; but it was his interpretation; and it was that which caused suffering so beyond all that poets have ever dreamt of the infernal. I am ashamed to …
1929 · PDF PAGE 15
…ester came round the corner. That morrow, glowered Duguesclin, that morrow never came. The same sun that slew the spy broke the great brain of Dodu; that very afternoon, a gibbering maniac, they thrust him in the padded room, never again to emerge. The train drew up at the platform of the little junc- tion. He almost hissed in Bevans face. It was not Dodu at all, he screamed, it was a common criminal, an epileptic; he should never have been sent to Devils Island at all. He had been mad for months. His messages had no sense at all; it w…
1929 · PDF PAGE 51
The shell was consumed; the gases of the body, combined and recombined, flamed off, free from organic form. Where was Arthur? His brain, his individuality, his life, were utterly de- stroyed. As separate things, yes: Arthur had entered the universal consciousness. And I heard this utterance: or rather this is my translation into English of a single thought whose syn- thesis is Woe. Substance is called spirit or matter. Spirit and matter are one, indivisible, eternal, inde- structible. Infinite and eternal change! Infinite and eternal pain! No…
1929 · PDF PAGE 49
…into hyperbromic purulence. VIII The minute bacterial corruption now assumed a gross chemistry. The gases of putrefaction forming in the brain and interpenetrating it were represented in his consciousness by the denizens of the pustules becoming formless and impersonalArthur had not yet fathomed the abyss. Creeping, winding, embracing, the Universe en- folded him, violated him with a nameless and intimate contamination, involved his being in a more suffocating terror. Now and again it drowned that consciousness in a gulf which his thought coul…
1929 · PDF PAGE 40
The sick man stirred feebly. A portion of his brain had shaken off the poison for the moment, and was working furiously against time. I am going to die. The consolation of death is Religion. There is no use for Religion in life. How many atheists have I not known sign the arti- cles the sake of fellowships and livings! Religion in life is either an amusement and a soporific or a sham and a swindle. I was brought up a Presbyterian How easily I drifted into the English Church! And now where is God? Where is the Lamb of God? Where is the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 50
…ng them. In death this limitation is entirely removed. Of the infinite content of the Universe every item was separately real- ized. The brain of Arthur had become equal in power to that attributed by theologians to the Creator; yet of ex- ecutive power there was no seed. The impotence of man before circumstance was in him magnified indefinitely, yet without loss of detail or of mass. He understood that The Many was The One without losing or fusing the con- ception of either. He was God, but a God irretrievably damned: a being infinite, yet lim…
1929 · PDF PAGE 16
…eanne d'Arc, his mouth wide open, his Baedeker limp in his perspiring hand. She's riding astride! The molten mad- ness throbbed in his brain. She's got man's clothes on! The shocking truth must out: Theodore Bugg had come to Paris for Pleasure! He had only been able to spare two days, the Sun- day and Monday of Whitsuntide. He had travelled by the night boat on Saturday, arriving in Paris on Sunday morningthe first step downward! The air of Paris in- toxicated him; the Grands Boulevards ate into his moral fibre like a dragon chewing butter…
1929 · PDF PAGE 35
…th it! He would lie all day like a log; then without warning or ap- parent cause the convulsions would begin. Arthur's steady scientific brain stood it well; it was only two days before his death that delirium began. I was not with him; worn out as I was, and yet utterly unable to sleep, the doctor had insisted on my taking a long motor drive. In the fresh air I slumbered. I awoke to hear an unfamil- iar voice saying in my ear, Now for the fun of the fair! There was no one there. Quick on its heels followed my husband's voice as I had long si…
1929 · PDF PAGE 47
And yet we know how tumour of the brain begets hallu- cinations. Consciousness works strangely; the least dis- turbance of the blood supply, and it goes out like a can- dle, or else takes monstrous forms. Here was the overwhelming truth; in death man lives again, and lives for ever. Yet we might have thought of it; the phantasmagoria of life which throng the mind of a drowning man might have suggested something of the sort to any man with a sympathetic and active imagination. Worse even than the thoughts themselves was the apprehension of the t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 14
…gundy; press vats in Cognac; ha! The souffle with the nuts in it is ready for us by the Seine, and the like, showed me that his giant brain had not only grappled with the problem, but solved it to his satisfaction. The plan was perfect; on the night of the eclipse those three guards would be on duty at such and such gates; Dodu would tear his clothes into strips, bind and gag Bertrand, come and release me. Together we should spring on Rolland, take his uniform and rifle, and leave him bound and gagged. We should then dash for the shore, do t…